How to Fill Out a Credit Card Receipt Form: Fields and Signature

To fill out a credit card receipt form correctly, record the merchant name and location, the date and time, the total charged, the last five digits of the card number, the authorization code, and the merchant and terminal IDs; add a signature line if your processor or the transaction type calls for one; and hand or send the customer their copy before closing the sale. Electronic terminals populate most of these fields automatically, but the same information belongs on a handwritten slip, and the same federal rules govern what you may and may not print.

Fields Every Receipt Needs

Whether the receipt comes off a thermal printer or out of a carbon-copy book, six pieces of information have to be on it:

Merchant name and location: your registered business name plus the city and state where the sale happened.
Transaction date and time: the exact date, plus the terminal timestamp on electronic receipts.
Total amount: the final dollar figure including tax, tip, and any service fee. If the terminal only partially approved the charge, the approved amount is the total that goes on the receipt.
Truncated card number: no more than the last five digits (see below).
Authorization code: the alphanumeric code returned by the card network when it approved the sale.
Merchant ID and terminal ID: these tie the receipt to your account and the specific device, which matters for chargebacks and bookkeeping.

If you add a surcharge for credit card use, the card networks require that the customer be told about it before the transaction is completed, and Visa’s rules cap the surcharge at your actual cost of acceptance. List any surcharge as its own line item so the breakdown is clear and disputes are easier to defend.

Truncating the Card Number

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act added a truncation rule at 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(g): no electronically printed receipt may show more than the last five digits of the card number, and no part of the expiration date may appear at all.¹ A lost or stolen receipt with a properly truncated number is useless to a thief.

The rule reaches only receipts printed electronically by a terminal, register, or software system. Handwritten receipts and old-style carbon-copy imprints are not covered.¹ That exception matters if you still use a manual imprint machine, but it is not a green light to write full card numbers by hand: PCI DSS restricts how cardholder data may be stored regardless of how it was captured, and any stored primary account number must be rendered unreadable through encryption, truncation, or one-way hashing.²

Willful violations expose a merchant to statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per receipt under the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s civil liability section, plus any actual damages the cardholder proves.³ Class actions have produced seven-figure settlements. Checking that your terminal firmware truncates correctly is worth the few minutes it takes.

Filling Out a Manual Receipt Form

If you take orders by phone, use a knuckle-buster imprint machine, or sell at craft fairs, you fill out a paper receipt by hand. Carbon-copy receipt books from any office supply store come pre-formatted with fields for each required data point.

Fill in every field legibly. Start with your business name and address, then the date, the customer’s name, and a description of what was sold. Write the total in both the number box and the written-out line, the same way you would on a check, so the figure cannot be altered or disputed. If you took an imprint, the raised numbers from the card transfer through the carbon. If you wrote a card number by hand, record only the last four or five digits, and keep any full-number records locked and encrypted.

Hand the customer the top copy and keep the carbon. Because the FACTA truncation rule does not reach handwritten or imprinted receipts, a carbon showing the full embossed number is not a FACTA violation, but PCI DSS still treats that copy as sensitive cardholder data. Store it in a locked container with limited access and plan to destroy it once your retention window closes.

The Signature Line

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover all made signatures optional for EMV chip transactions beginning in April 2018.⁴ The chip itself authenticates the card during an in-person sale far more reliably than a scrawled name did.

Optional under network rules is not the same as gone. Your merchant services agreement may still require a signature for manually keyed transactions, high-dollar purchases, or transactions where the chip could not be read and the card was swiped instead.⁴ Check your contract before you strip the signature line from your receipt template.

Even where signatures are not required, a signed slip is one of the stronger pieces of evidence in a chargeback dispute when a cardholder claims they never authorized the purchase. For low-risk, low-dollar chip transactions, the speed of skipping the signature probably outweighs the risk. For big-ticket sales, collecting the signature is cheap insurance.

Giving the Receipt to the Customer

Once the terminal approves the sale, get the completed receipt to the customer before you close the transaction. For in-person purchases, the terminal prints on thermal paper and you hand over the customer copy. Confirm the total matches what the customer expected. Catching an error at the register is far easier than unwinding it later through a billing dispute.

Digital Receipts and E-Sign Consent

Most POS systems can email or text the receipt instead of printing it. Digital delivery is convenient, but it triggers the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act when the receipt satisfies a legal requirement to provide something in writing. Under 15 U.S.C. § 7001(c), the customer must give affirmative consent to receive electronic records, and you must first tell them:⁵

That they have the right to get a paper copy instead.
That they can revoke consent to electronic delivery at any time, along with any fees or consequences of doing so.
Whether consent covers only this transaction or all future receipts during the business relationship.
What hardware or software they need to open and save the electronic record.

The customer then has to confirm consent electronically in a way that shows they can actually access the format you will use.⁵ In practice, most POS systems handle this by prompting the customer to type an email address on the terminal screen and tap “send receipt.” If the customer declines digital delivery, print the paper copy.

For emailed receipts, verify the system reports the message sent before you close out. Bounced emails leave the customer without proof of purchase, which creates problems for returns and warranty claims. A quick “Did you get the email?” takes two seconds.

Keeping and Destroying Your Copy

Two clocks run on your receipt records: the IRS retention period and your merchant agreement’s chargeback window. Meet whichever is longer.

The IRS generally expects businesses to keep records supporting income and expenses for at least three years from the date the return was filed.⁶ That window stretches to six years if you underreport gross income by more than 25%, and there is no time limit at all on records connected to a fraudulent or unfiled return.⁷ Three years is the floor; six is a reasonable precaution if your income fluctuates or your deductions are complex.

Chargeback windows overlap. Cardholders generally have up to 120 days to file a chargeback, and that stretches to 540 days for transactions like travel bookings or advance-purchase goods. When a chargeback or retrieval request lands, you typically have 10 to 20 days to respond with evidence, including a copy of the signed receipt. If you cannot produce it, the issuing bank will almost certainly reverse the funds. Merchant services agreements commonly require 18 months to two years of retention to cover the dispute window, with the exact period in your contract. Holding receipts for at least three years usually satisfies both clocks.

When the retention period ends, credit card receipts do not go in the trash. The FTC’s Disposal Rule at 16 CFR 682.3 requires anyone who holds consumer information for a business purpose to dispose of it with reasonable measures against unauthorized access.⁸ Cross-cut shredding is the baseline for paper; secure deletion or overwriting handles electronic files.

PCI DSS adds another layer. Any stored cardholder data, even a truncated number paired with a name and date, must be destroyed when there is no longer a legitimate business reason to keep it. Full magnetic stripe data, card verification codes, and PINs may never be stored after a transaction is authorized.² If your terminal or POS software is logging any of that, you have a compliance problem to fix regardless of how carefully you handle paper.

Mark the destruction date on each receipt when you file it, and batch your shredding quarterly. Routine disposal is the easiest way to stay on the right side of both the FTC rule and PCI.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
2
PCI Security Standards Council. PCI Data Storage Dos and Donts
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681n – Civil Liability for Willful Noncompliance
4
Visa. Visa – Signature Optional
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 7001 – General Rule of Validity
6
Internal Revenue Service. How Long Should I Keep Records
7
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 305, Recordkeeping
8
eCFR. 16 CFR 682.3 – Proper Disposal of Consumer Information